Small Things Considered

Putrescence and Poetry

by Corrado Nai  
Flickering stars filigree the cosmic void. A green, incandescent planet bursts on the screen. We didn't know we were watching a science fiction movie. Drumrolls climax into the next frame. Suddenly, fiction is stripped away, and in a heartbeat we are thrown into the heart of science and culture. We are not staring at the infinitely large but observing the minuscule at work. Read more →

How to Be a Lichen

by Nastassja Noell  
Lichens are symbiotic or­gan­isms – al­gae, fun­gi, cy­ano­bac­te­ria, bac­te­ria and yeasts – that form mi­nia­ture eco­sys­tems that you can hold in the palm of your hand. They live on trees and rocks through­out the South­ern Ap­pa­lach­ians, and are also found in the Arc­tic, the An­tarc­tic, rain­forests, al­pine tun­dra and es­pe­cial­ly in the de­sert. Read more →

The Lives of Fungi

by Elio  
In the beginning of this gorgeous and intellectually fulfilling book, Britt tells us that, due to modern technology, fungi are now known to be "more ubiquitous than we thought" and are "much more important to the environment and, by extension, to ourselves." He proceeds to justify these statements... Read more →

The Ugliest of Mushrooms

by Elio  
If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then, faith and begorra as the Irishmen may say, so does ugliness. It is widely stated in the mycophile literature that the ugliest of mushrooms is one called Pisolithus arhizus (once tinctorius, for reasons I'll explain soon)... Read more →

Book Review: Finding the Mother Tree

by Janie  
Behind the scenes, underground, fungal networks are essential to the wellbeing of forests. Trees symbiotically associate with mycorrhizal fungi, exchanging plant-produced sugars for fungus-gathered soil nutrients and water. It's an intimate arrangement: the fungal cells thread between... Read more →

Fungomania III. A Yeast Messes with the Gut Microbiome

by Elio  
The microbiome of the large in­test­ine of mam­mals, mainly com­posed of bac­te­ria, is the sub­ject of in­numer­able cur­rent stu­dies. And for good rea­sons. Of all the body's mi­cro­biomes, it is the lar­gest in num­bers, varie­ty, and of like­ly im­port­ance in health and dis­ease. De­fy­ing ex­pect­ations, it is re­mark­ably stable... Read more →

Fungomania II. A (not so) new face of Fusarium

by Roberto  
This is a story about fusaria by an admittedly non-expert. Much of what I write in this post I just recently learned, thus revealing from the start my naïveté on the fascinating subject of fungi as high protein foods. Read more →

Fungomania I. Fungi Make Flowers

by Elio  
Nature seems to be in­tent in fool­ing every­one, ex­per­ienced bo­tan­ists included. An ex­ample is seen in the abi­li­ty of some fungi to change the ter­mi­nal leaves of cer­tain must­ard plants into what look like flo­ral pe­tals, mak­ing them look like real flowers. Polli­nat­ing in­sects are at­tracted to them and land on these struc­tures... Read more →

Underground Highways

by Roberto | This photograph, taken from our book Life at the Edge of Sight, shows a network of almost invisible fungal filaments which, like miniature highways, wind their way around peaks and form bridges over valleys all within a minute amount of soil. Read more →

Exploration, Streptomyces-style

by Roberto | The evolutionary trajectories of bacteria are great­ly in­fluen­ced by their re­pro­duc­tive suc­cess in chan­ging en­vi­ron­ments. Of course, this is not just about how fast bac­te­ria di­vide when con­di­tions per­mit growth but also how well they sur­vive in the ab­sence of growth. In ad­di­tion, an im­port­ant de­ter­mi­nant of the over­all fit­ness of a bac­te­ri­al lineage is... Read more →